


Xiang

by norah



Category: Temeraire - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Historical, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-08
Updated: 2007-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:39:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norah/pseuds/norah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lien and Napoleon discuss military strategy after <em>Black Powder War</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Xiang

**Author's Note:**

> For Artaxastra. Thanks to Penknife and Grace for beta.
> 
> _Xiang_, in Mandarin, means both "to want or desire" (_Wo xiang hui guo_ = I want to go home) and "to miss" (_Wo xiang ni_ = I miss you).

Lien scraped mud from one ivory talon with distaste. The mud came off, only to cling stubbornly to the talon she had used to scrape it. She sighed and put her foreleg back on the damp ground, where it squelched slightly. She had known that the nations of the west were barbaric, but she truly had not expected such primitive conditions.

She had thought that after Napoleon met her at Danzig they might fly together directly to Paris. He had promised her a fine pavilion and well-cooked meals there, and she was weary of the cold and the mud and the raw meat. The barbarian's dragons did not mind it, but they knew no better. The companion of a Prince should scorn to be treated in such a fashion.

Instead, she was accompanying this human army on their ponderous victory march back to their capitol. Napoleon had refused to fly on with her, saying that it would not do to leave his men behind so precipitately. She asked, "Are you so afraid that they will cease to fight for you if you do not nursemaid them?"

"No, my lady, they will fight for me whether I am here nor not," he had said. "But they will not do it half so well if they do not love me." And she could not gainsay that, so here they were a week later, having traveled less than half the distance she could have flown in a single day and still bivouacking in the mud and snow.

And where was the Emperor? When she pressed him, earlier, on his plans to go after England, he had said he would meet with her here, once he had finished counseling with his generals. She was not accustomed to being kept waiting. She snorted, and her breath showed white and misty in the chill air. She was not accustomed to many things she had encountered here; the lack of fear the barbarians showed her was novel, too, for someone born in an unlucky skin, and yet it only served to make her feel more uneasy, more alien. There was no predicting these men and their strange ways of thinking.

She was sometimes unsure of what deGuignes and Napoleon thought they had proposed when they had entered into an alliance with her. She had come all this way for revenge, and the promise of aid. And to that end, she had allied herself with them in their war, helping them update their ridiculous aerial tactics.

And yet it was often as though deGuignes thought himself some sort of glorified village go-between, helping France's favored son to court a companion. The sort of gifts Napoleon had given her were not the sort of favors one bestows on a mere ally; the diamond alone was worth hundreds of horses. He _was_ courting her, in his barbaric fashion; how ironic that he should do so, when she finally wore the mourning color she had been born to with cause.

Not that he was not respectful of her grief; indeed, the Emperor seemed to understand most keenly her need for revenge, and to be eager to help her bring about the utter destruction of all her enemies held most dear. He was united with her in hatred of England, and she found it all the more strange that he should be late, as he customarily strove to treat her with the greatest courtesy.

It was another half an hour before he came hurrying across the field, alone.

"Lady Lien, I beg your pardon. My generals can be a tedious lot, full of quibbles about provisioning and tactics. If they were not also lucky men, I should be tempted to be quit of them altogether. It was not my intent to keep you waiting."

"There is waiting and there is waiting," she replied, dignified. "I long to move toward our mutual enemy; it is that waiting I abhor above all. You said we should speak now of strategy; what, then, have you planned?"

"I regret to say that we must yet wait. A direct move on England cannot be attempted now; you must abide a while longer, my lady, before we may act directly. Now we must return to Paris, where you will dine upon the finest dishes and be housed in a marble pavilion; you shall lack for nothing." He smiled a courtly smile and gave her a little bow.

This was not what she had expected, not at all, and it was a blow to hear it. "I care not for my own comfort; I care for dispatch, and honor to my beloved companion. You say we may not now act directly; when, then, shall we act?"

Napoleon was all soldier again, brusque and efficient. "This spring we will send troops through Spain into Portugal, hoping to gain tactical advantage and cut off British trade. I am sending thirty thousand men under one of my best commanders to mass at the Spanish border in preparation. If we can control Portugal and keep our boot on the Bourbon neck of Spain, we might look toward England as early as this time next year."

Her ruff flared, and she hissed. "DeGuignes said nothing of a Spanish campaign! I agreed to aid you in subduing those enemies which we have so recently and thoroughly put to rout, and I have honored that agreement. And in turn you said that once your borders were secure, you would then ally yourself with me against England, or will you now be forsworn?"

His lips thinned, and he glared up at her. "Madam, you go too far. I will admit that your interests and mine are in some respects so close as to be parallel, and I am happy to recognize and proclaim the great services that you have rendered the French people. But I command these armies, and you would do well to remember it." He paced the muddy field, heedless of the mud spattering his glossy boots and white dress trousers. "Direct war on England is not so simple as you seem to believe."

She craned her head and looked at him with disdain. "Our military philosophers say, 'In war, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.' Now is the time to strike, with the massed force of your armies, while our mutual enemy is in disarray and does not expect the blow; I have lent you my aid to achieve this strategic moment, and I will not see you waste it."

"Your military philosophers are not wrong," he said, "but I doubt very much if they have ever seen a war at sea. You yourself have no concept of naval power; do not think I have not heard of your foolishness at Danzig, flying out into the teeth of the gunboats in heedless pursuit of your revenge. Your hotheaded ignorance lost us a fine dragon that day, and it would lose us far more if I were to take your counsel now."

Lien snorted. Still, perhaps what he said was true; China fought no battles at sea, and there was yet much to be learned, even from barbarian nations.

"It is clear that you know battle from the air, far better than any commander in Europe," Napoleon said, his flattery transparent but nonetheless pleasant. "I do not claim that my victories would have been so swift, nor so decisive, without your aid, though I flatter myself that I should have achieved them nonetheless, for as you know the air, I know the ground.

"But the English know the sea better than either of us, and there are nineteen long miles of it between their shores and ours. We still retain some small naval force, but they have devastated us in the past and now outnumber us greatly. A direct attack on their shores at this time could meet only with disaster."

She growled, and the earth vibrated with the deep hint of the divine wind in her voice. "I have allied myself with you to bring about England's ruin, not to help you expand your empire in all directions but west! If England's ships concern you so, what use are your promises to me? They must suffer, and you have given me assurances that they will; tell me, then, how do you propose to dismay them?"

Napoleon squinted up at her through the grey glare of sun. "I know you are but recently come from China, and have had little contact with countries so far west as this. How familiar are you with the general geographies and borders of this area?"

She had flown over the interior and seen a bit of the coast, but had been forced to rely on others for larger tactical decisions thus far, though she did not like to admit it. "Not so familiar as I would like to be. Your maps are too small, and you have no reading frames suitable for dragons." She sniffed. "Had I known, I could have brought one with me."

"You have but to tell our carpenters what you desire and they will build it for you, you know that, my lady." Napoleon waved his hand extravagantly. Lien snorted again, but said nothing. There were benefits to being courted, and after all, such service was only her due.

"In any case, let me lay out for you as best I can the current state of the world and our position as it currently stands." He unearthed a stout branch from beneath one of her claws. She looked on with disdain as he dragged it through the muddy ground, drawing a crude map in the soft earth, but bent to examine it with interest when he had finished.

"You see your enemy and mine, here on this isle; they may seem small, but their ships control the seas, and thence much of our trade. The Continental System, to which all France's allies and conquests have submitted, is an effort to cut off that trade, to starve her out, but you see Portugal, this coastline," and Napoleon paced over to a nearby patch of mud, "here, is still open to them, and Gibraltar," and here he stabbed his stick viciously into part of another coastline, "is theirs as well. As long as they hold Gibraltar and Malta and trade freely with Portugal, they will retain their strength." He glared at the triangle of Malta and ground his heel in it as he turned.

He had clearly considered the situation at some length and not come to this plan lightly; the ocean added a third dimension to this war that she had not fully appreciated. Still, perhaps she would be able to use her knowledge of aerial tactics to find another way. She listened carefully.

"I have a chance to take both Portugal and Gibraltar, and with any luck commandeer the substantial Portuguese naval forces as well. With those coastlines sealed to Britain, and those ships under my command, Britain would be hungry and hunted, her navy weakened and scattered.

"The Spanish King's lapdog Godoy has already sent to me to curry my favor, and will admit French troops into his country gladly to keep them from massing hungry at his border. Junot can bring my men through here, so," and Napoleon scratched the path out for her, "and take Lisbon and her shipyards and navy, and then down here," another line, "and overpower Gibraltar."

He turned his shining face up to her. "We should have them then, do you not see it? All their power at sea would be as nothing without the supplies they need to keep their ships afloat and their people fed. Their trade would dry out, and we could harry them easily until they grew weak enough to invade at last."

Lien hissed. "I do not like a siege." Yongxing had been dead this half year and more, and still his spirit remained unavenged. This slow, dull strategy did not do his ghost the honor it deserved. England must burn, and the upstart and his common soldier weep tears of blood, before her Prince could rest.

Napoleon leaned on his stick and looked up at her. "Nor do I, madam, but I have tried invasions before and failed utterly, with great loss of men, dragons, and ships. Their navy sweeps all before it, as if it were your own divine wind, and France no longer has any strength at sea. I see no other alternative , while they so dominate the ocean."

"But where are their dragons now?" she asked. "They sent only the traitorous whelp and his ragtag crew to assist their allies; have they so many dragons, then, that they might repel an invasion once more?"

"They had pulled them back along their own coasts last winter, to defend against just the sort of plan you are proposing. I have not heard anything else; I assume they are waiting in defensive readiness for another direct strike. They will not expect me to move south, and we will have the advantage there."

They remained silent for a few moments, contemplating the map.

"So be it, then," Lien rumbled, finally. "But see that you turn toward England once you have cut off all trade, and use your power to bring her to heel. They must be punished."

"And so they shall be, my lady," Napoleon promised, and the steel in his voice left her in no doubt of his determination.


End file.
